Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus capable of storing and printing received print data.
Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus in these days temporarily stores print data input from a printer driver into a hard disk mounted inside thereof. When a user logs into the image forming apparatus, the image forming apparatus prints the print data belonging to the login user. In the image forming apparatus, thus, the print data is temporarily stored and then printed for security reasons.
Such an image forming apparatus first authenticates a user who is to use the apparatus. Upon completion of the user authentication, the image forming apparatus displays a list of document names of the print data belonging to the authenticated user and a print setting on an operation unit. The user selects the name of a desired document from the displayed list to instruct the image forming apparatus to print the print data corresponding to the desired document. Accordingly, the image forming apparatus prints the print data of the desired document.
Meanwhile, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2011-223180 discuses an image forming apparatus which automatically begins to perform print processing without an operation for selecting a document name by a user. Such an image forming apparatus enables the user to save labor in selecting a desired document from a displayed list.
According to the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2011-223180, the image forming apparatus automatically begins to perform the print processing on print data of the authenticated user. However, there may be cases where the user accidentally transmits the same print data to the image forming apparatus twice, or the user retransmits print data after changing a print setting. In such cases, the image forming apparatus automatically prints each of all the print data. Consequently, there is a possibility that the image forming apparatus may perform unnecessary printing.